Fighter

8

May 20th 2022

The next month was a bit hard. Amanda was distant form me. She kept to herself and made me sleep on the couch for two weeks. The only good thing that came out of that was that I learned that we could co parent pretty well with minimum communication.

I gave Amanda a lot of space and let her do her thing until she was ready to come back to me. With having to deal with my wife hating me, I also had to come to terms with the fact my mother was home. John kept his word and called me when they touched down in New York and once again when they dropped Isabella off at Joe's house.

I only have heard from Isabella twice since she has been home but it's because of the time differences and her job. Since she got home Isabella had taken the gym back from Joe. Much to my pleasure she has even changed the locked on the doors and made the gym more secure, also Isabella pulled her house from the market and that she moved back in.

When I got that news it felt like I got half of my heart back. At that point Amanda was still giving me the cold shoulder, but it was okay. For now my mother is safe at home and I want to keep it that way. Sophia also gave me a phone call updating me on the case and slowly she is pulling it together.

From the intel she has on Joe and the current surveillance she has on him she can tell he is tightening up the rope. His guys are always around him and are guarding his house. Sophia also told me that Joe hasn't dealt or got a new shipment of drugs since Isabella came home. Sophia believes Joe is planning a big buy soon so they are going to wait on that buy before moving in. They want something big to catch him with so the charges will hold a greater penalty.

It took a week for Amanda to warm back up to me. We talked everything out and I explained pretty much everything that happened with Sophia. It was then that she really understood that my mother is really in danger.

From there Amanda still made me sleep in the couch for another week. I'm not sure if it was because she felt bad for my back or me but after that second week on the couch she finally let me back into the bedroom. We still kept to ourselves tough, only really talking when we needed to.

I had a few shoots to do so that made me get out of the house and I started to clean out the apartment above the studio. That got me out of the house more and it released some of the lingering tension between Amanda and I.

Amanda finally started to break when I said I was going shopping for the apartment. She got excited and we had a really fun day just the two of us. Amelia took Alicia for the day so Amanda and I could get a lot done. That day we got almost everything the apartment needed. We had fun going from store to store getting everything we thought a 19 year old would need for a two and half months stay in a foreign country away from home.

Amanda and I reconnected when we started to set up the place. Loading everything we got for her into the place and we waited around for the new appliances to arrive. After that there was really only one thing missing, Spencer herself.

The weeks passed by and Amanda and I started to get into a routine again. I mostly took Alicia to work with me while Amanda went to the restaurant. Every now and then Amanda and I would come in on her lunch break and bring Alicia and me some food.

Progressively things got back to normal. Slowly at first then finally things just clicked again. Alicia has been growing so fast I can't really believe it. She went from fitting in the palm of my hand and sleeping all day to now being more alert and looking at everything around her.

Now here I am. Standing in the same terminal I dropped my mother off at two months ago. Only this time my life is about to be altered in a way I never thought could be possible. Once my eyes locked onto her I stopped breathing.